How to check if a string is a number?

More obvious and simple, thread safe example:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>

int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
    if (argc < 2){
        printf ("Dont' forget to pass arguments!\n");
        return(-1);
    }

    printf ("You have executed the program : %s\n", argv[0]);

    for(int i = 1; i < argc; i++){
        if(strcmp(argv[i],"--some_definite_parameter") == 0){
            printf("You have passed some definite parameter as an argument. And it is \"%s\".\n",argv[i]);
        }
        else if(strspn(argv[i], "0123456789") == strlen(argv[i])) {
            size_t big_digit = 0;
            sscanf(argv[i], "%zu%*c",&big_digit);
            printf("Your %d'nd argument contains only digits, and it is a number \"%zu\".\n",i,big_digit);
        }
        else if(strspn(argv[i], "0123456789abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz./") == strlen(argv[i]))
        {
            printf("%s - this string might contain digits, small letters and path symbols. It could be used for passing a file name or a path, for example.\n",argv[i]);
        }
        else if(strspn(argv[i], "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ") == strlen(argv[i]))
        {
            printf("The string \"%s\" contains only capital letters.\n",argv[i]);
        }
    }
}

if ( strlen(str) == strlen( itoa(atoi(str)) ) ) {
    //its an integer
}

As atoi converts string to number skipping letters other than digits, if there was no other than digits its string length has to be the same as the original. This solution is better than innumber() if the check is for integer.


  if(tmp[j] >= '0' && tmp[j] <= '9') // should do the trick

Forget about ASCII code checks, use isdigit or isnumber (see man isnumber). The first function checks whether the character is 0–9, the second one also accepts various other number characters depending on the current locale.

There may even be better functions to do the check – the important lesson is that this is a bit more complex than it looks, because the precise definition of a “number string” depends on the particular locale and the string encoding.

Tags:

C

String